The panel discussion ‘What Does Trump’s Presidency Mean for the Rest of the World?’ on 25 November clearly highlighted this as it careened wildly, swerving from the global implications and election autopsies, to passionate debates over racism and fascism.

Journalist and author Laurie Penny damned the evening as a ‘normalising’ discussion about ‘a fascist’. Echoing this, Shelina Janmohamed (a commentator on Muslim social and religious trends) urged the audience to think about the framing of the stories told. ‘The way we talk about identity,’ she argued, referring to the coverage of the trial of Jo Cox’s murderer, ‘…affects real peoples’ lives’. There is a potential ‘ripple’ effect on women’s rights movements globally, she argued, legitimising misogyny as ‘locker room talk’, disregarding women’s place in society, and signalling that it’s okay to talk about your daughter in ‘repulsive’ ways.

Trump’s rhetoric around climate change has some fearing the death of climate politics. He talks about ‘setting free coal,’ says Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief for the New York Times. But, this won’t go far: ‘No one’s going to invest in coal, it’s not worth their money,’ Erlanger argued. Many countries are ‘invested in a cleaner world’ for their own reasons, so ’just because the president thinks it can happen’ it doesn’t mean it will.

Having previously referred to NATO as ‘obsolete‘, will Trump oversee a shift in the global security landscape? Dan Roberts, The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, argued Europe will be ‘looking after itself’: for Trump, world security isn’t ‘an American problem’. Erlanger demurred, pointing out that the USA’s NATO membership isn’t altruistic, but in American ‘interests’. President of the British International Studies Association, Inderjeet Parmar, agreed, ‘I don’t think America’s retreating’.

Author, broadcaster, and the chair of the event, Michael Goldfarb asked if Trump caught a ‘wave’ that’s sweeping the world. There is a ‘systemic’ element, Parmar mused; the populist surge is the ‘unravelling of an order’ unable to sustain the ‘Western’ dream. But did Trump’s supporters see themselves as part of a larger wave? One audience member disagreed, arguing that many who voted for Trump sought a conservative supreme court, and didn’t consider the ‘world economy’ or ‘globalism’.

To what extent Trump fulfils his campaign promises remains to be seen. ‘The office has a moderating influence’ argued Alex Sundstrom of Republicans Overseas UK, he will ‘tack to the centre to get stuff done’. Janmohamed disagreed, arguing that his appointees are ‘proof that he’s going to make good on those statements.’ Parmar, however, saw compromise ahead. ‘The education of Donald Trump is going to be the title of a really great book,’ he quipped, ‘that education began as soon as his election was through.’

Following the latest revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday panel on 6 November gathered to discuss Has NSA spying “reached too far”?

L-R: Owen Bennett-Jones, Julian Borger, James P. Rubin, Steven Erlanger. Photo: Sally Ashley-Cound

Chair Owen Bennett-Jones, a freelance journalist and a host of Newshour on the BBC World Service started off by asking if anyone really knows how much data has been collected?

Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief for The New York Times said:

“I’m not sure we know the answer to the question to be honest. Because these things have been kept secret and they remain secret.”

Julian Borger, The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, continued:

“There is an awful lot of material and it’s a very lengthy process figuring out what in it is of public interest…it’s the process of discussing with the government agencies involved about what it means and the balance between public interest and national security.”

James Rubin, a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute and former chief spokesperson for the US State Department, added:

“I don’t think Snowden knows. He’s got 50,000 documents from the NSA. I took one of these documents and I actually know something about this stuff …it’s hard to understand even for those who know the code words.”

Nigel Inkster, director of transnational threats and political risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), who served in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1975 to 2006, had some praise for the NSA and GCHQ:

“We’ve got this huge explosion of communications. . . . They were confronted with this new reality which they had to make sense of and I have to say, in the circumstances I think they’ve done a rather remarkable job.”

An audience member asked if “the threats justify the methods”?

Inkster replied:

“We elect a government and this is one of the responsibilities that they are assigned. It is for the government of the day to judge on the basis of the best information it can, what the security environment it faces.”

The panel were asked if the release of these documents has changed anything – has damage been done?

https://twitter.com/caro_schmitt/statuses/398172032355270656

Rubin:

“We’ll never know what changed people’s behaviours. People’s behaviours are going to change.”

Inkster:

“We will never know how different would the course of WWII been if Bletchley park had not broken and read the material that was being transmitted over Enigma. How can we judge? You can never do a counter factual assessment.”

Erlanger:

“There’s another level of damage which is to trust, to international relationships; the United States has a big problem with its allies.”

US goodwill was exhausted by Bush and Obama needs to deposit more goodwill. Remark @frontlineclub debate Why #nsa hit US reputation so hard.

— Karen Melchior (ex-verif) (@karmel80) November 6, 2013

Christoph Scheuermann, London bureau chief for German weekly Der Spiegel, seemed surprised at the panel for thinking that anything had changed:

“I thought this was really naive, we don’t live in an age where terrorists…have to read The Guardian or Der Spiegel or the New York Times to know what intelligence agencies are capable of.”

Borger added:

“We share all of GCHQ material, names of everyone who works there, addresses, what they like to do at the weekend, with 850,000 Americans. Half of those people are private contractors. So the odds of that getting out are very high.”

After all this effort, disruption and political chaos, what were the benefits of the NSA gathering all the information?

Inkster:

“Knowing who’s in touch with who can be as – if not more important than – knowing what they’re saying to each other. This is a business that the bad guys are trying to hide the fact that they’re in communication.

“[Secondly] you can use analysis of big data to ascertain patterns of correlation, which are simply not discernable with lesser data sets. This has applications in all sorts of areas, in retail, public health…you can identify all sorts of things.”

One point the panel agreed on was that the world has completely changed from the days of phone bugging and code-breaking:

Watch the event:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-has-nsa-spying